Rex Murphy: And the Oscar for moral hypocrisy goes to ... Hollywood!

Post-Harvey, the Academy Awards have changed. Pass the envelope, please

Harvey Weinstein, second from left, celebrates alongside the actress Gwynneth Paltrow and other producers of “Shakespeare in Love” after their film won the best picture Oscar, in Los Angeles, March 22, 1999.Monica Almeida/The New York Times

“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground…”

Lucifer, the light-bearer. Not perhaps since the fall of the original archetype has there been such a fall as Harvey Weinstein’s (or “God,” as Meryl Streep described him). For it is not just the fall, it is the place from which he fell, the very mount of the modern temple itself: fabled Hollywood.

Hollywood, elite of the elites, kingdom of fame, fortune and cosmetology, the greatest machine for self-infatuation and ostentatious sanctimony ever conceived of by the mind of man. Hollywood, the nuclear-fired power plant of virtue-signalling, where every good liberal cause comes with its own swag bag, and progressive posturing is a lifestyle honed to an art form, where greed wrestles daily with vanity. It’s possibly the only place on Earth where Hypocrisy is occasionally ashamed of itself.

Hollywood may be the only place on Earth where Hypocrisy is ashamed of itself

Post-Harvey, the awards have changed. Pass the envelope, please.

TheAward for Most Perfect Bleat of Utter Mindlessness goes to: Donna Karan, Fashion Queen, for this: “You look at everything all over the world today and how women are dressing and what they are asking by just presenting themselves the way they do. What are they asking for?” Ah, yes — it’s always the frock’s fault, and the females who yearn for them. Never the designer, or a complacent culture that enables abuse. It’s the gowns, you see.

If there is a Handmaid’s Tale worth paying attention to it’s the fashion industry’s raging obsequiousness to the manners and mores of Hollywood’s sexually-drenched presentation of itself. Every red carpet parade could serve as an appetizer list, amuse bouches for Harvey’s imperious tastes.

The Award for Can This Pit Get Much Deeper goes to Ben Affleck!

The Award for Can This Pit Get Much Deeper?: Ben Affleck! After Gigli one would have thought all depths had been sounded, but Affleck had to come out minutes after “deploring” Weinstein’s grotesques habits and hobbies with an apology for his own gropes and grabs years past. As a Ms. Annamarie Tendler elegantly twittered: “I would also love to get an apology from Ben Affleck who grabbed my ass at a Golden Globes party in 2014.” The slab of rancid icing on the cake is a Variety story wondering whether the “box office” for the new Justice League movie which Affleck’s infects might also suffer. Now there’s the real issue.

The Award for Longest Sleep with the Lights On (As Long As I Get an Interview or a Cover Photo Division): The Entertainment/Fashion Press Complex. The Entertainment Tonight, E Television, Access Hollywood, etc. infotainment droolathons have been “reporting” on Hollywood for more than three decades, giving the world the “inside scoops” of the lives of its rich and famous. Their formula is fatuousness wedded to sycophancy undergirded by willful ignorance. All those scoops and not a word on Harvey.

The Every Sodom has its Gomorrah Award: Washington. For years Hollywood and its progressive mega-stars and mega-producers have done a mutual transplant with Washington Democrats. Politics and Celebrity have cohabitated to the advantage of both. Harvey Weinstein’s second favourite pastime was jollifying with the royalty of the Democratic Party — he may have held as many Obama/Hillary fundraisers as “auditions” for the young and nubile. Celebrity has been cruising with Power for decades now, and thus Weinstein’s crash leaves a crater big enough for both.

For years, Politics and Celebrity have cohabitated, to the advantage of both

The Hey, Ben — Room Down There For One More? Award: Jimmy Kimmel. The latest Joel Osteen of the late night preacher/comics, Kimmel was also the onetime host of the Man Show. He is now on tape from those pre-preachers days taking part in a crude gag where he invites young females to feel his zucchini-stuffed crotch with such delicacies as: “How old are you?” When she answers, “Eighteen,” he asks, “You sure of that? Cause old Jimmy doesn’t need to do time … Maybe it would be easier if you put your mouth on it.” Donald Trump is such a vulgarian.

Almost everyone knows the Academy Awards have been a real bust these last years. What with all the female empowerment it has so zealously embraced in the interminable speeches, superheroette movies and Ghostbusters remake, this is perhaps a surprise. But next year it will be an extravaganza, biggest audience ever. Just change the categories and break out the sackcloths. I have suggested a few here. But the premiere category, replacing Best Picture, surely should be: The Award for Longest Under(bathrobe)Cover Chauvinist Predator … goes to ….?

Almost Done!

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